The Public Relations Blog

Jason Mudd, APR, is CEO of Axia Public Relations. He is certified in inbound marketing and is an Emmy Award-winning, accredited public relations practitioner, speaker, author and entrepreneur. Jason has been CEO of Axia since 2002. Connect with Jason on Twitter @jasonmudd9 and Axia Public Relations @axiapr. Be sure to tweet and share your thoughts below. We’ll read and respond to each of them.
Learn more about Jason Mudd. Read Jason's recent blog posts below.

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Our PR agency bills based on value and scope. We don’t recommend billing or paying by the word or by the hour.

Many professional services firms – including some great law firms, accounting firms, engineering firms, architecture firms, and public relations firms – bill hourly. Our firm is somewhat of an anomaly, as we don’t bill hourly.

In fact, with all due respect to our professional service colleagues who do, we have personal and corporate ethical issues with hourly billing. And we are not alone in this opinion. While you might not share our belief, we’ll explain in this blog post our ethical concerns, why brevity is key, and why results ultimately matter more.

We were in the final in-person pitch with a prospective client. The client was a tech company that had developed a negative reputation online for its fast-paced growth because it had hurt some feelings along the way. While the company earned this reputation, the managers saw the errors of their ways and wanted to get a better handle on the company’s reputation after improving its operations and culture.

Learn the best methods of establishing relationships with media representatives

Email is a terrific way to pitch to journalists. Most people use this tool to communicate – it saves time and it’s efficient. So how can you ensure that media representatives open your email pitch instead of instantly deleting it? While there’s no definitive answer, you can increase your chances of connecting with journalists if you follow these do’s and don’ts in your emails:

Bring more customers to your company with a better reputation

Warren Buffett said it best:

A company’s reputation is one of its most important tools online – every website has ratings and feedback sections. Obviously, too many “1-star” reviews on a giant online retailer like Amazon can doom a product. It’s important to remember that while there are many indicators of online reputation, one of the most important consumer indicators may be the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Public relations is, at its core, a way for companies and brands to build mutually beneficial relationships with their audiences and customers. To be sure, traditional PR still has a place at the table. Everything from influencing public perception with outstanding marketing campaigns and developing effective crisis communication strategies to holding news conferences and organizing successful events falls under the umbrella of traditional PR.

However, traditional PR is no longer enough.

PR is rapidly evolving, thanks mostly to the dawn of the digital age and the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. Now, an advanced form of PR thrives, and it’s based on digital methods of communicating and sharing. Bottom line: It’s crucial for your business to be firmly engaged in digital PR.

Your company won a prestigious award. Why isn’t it making the news? The news business is a highly competitive industry. Awards are often not as newsworthy as you think and wish they were. Most media outlets consider awards to be fluff. And if it’s an annual award, it’s tired, they say. And when the award is issued by a competing media outlet, the media acts like a jealous lover.

Earlier this month, fast-food chain Wendy’s earned numerous headlines because its social media team challenged a heckler on the Twitter playground. Upworthy writer Parker Molloy captured the entire exchange before Wendy’s deleted its comments and the critic, @NHRide (aka Thuggy-D), deleted his Twitter account. It went like this: